Somebody’s home, Beacher decided, picking up her pace.
“STILL NOTHIN’,” Jimmy Raeburn said, as he heard Graham Wallace coming up behind him. There was no mistaking those boots on the DeepScan’s vinyl flooring.
“Never mind,” Wallace replied. “We’re checkin’ every inch.”
Because the feckin’ laird says so, Raeburn thought but kept it to himself. He’d already said more than was entirely safe about the boring search. If Wallace mentioned his complaint to Gibson or Macauley, nasty repercussions might follow.
Raeburn hailed from East Kilbride, in South Lanarkshire, where he’d grown up poor and bitterly resenting charity from people who were better off. He wasn’t one of those who hated England from the cradle up, but natural defiance of authority and falling in with bad companions predisposed him to rebel. That attitude had cost him time in jail on several occasions, and his life was going nowhere in a hurry when he’d met an older fellow who was wrapped up in the Cause.
And here he was, staring at monitors while riding up and down Loch Ness, wishing a monster would pop up and give the boat a shaky-waky, just to break up the monotony. It was a funny way to run a revolution, if he did say so himself.
Of course, it was the so-called laird’s idea, and Gibson couldn’t seem to turn him down. Raeburn knew all about the cash Macauley had invested in the TIF—well, he knew some of it; enough to know the old man was a major benefactor—but you had to draw the line somewhere. Suppose, Raeburn wondered, the old fart gave the TIF a million pounds and said they had to spend it hunting fairies at the bottom of his garden? What would Gibson say, besides, “Yes, sir”?
Twelve hours coming up, since they had started out that morning, and the night work still lay waiting. Raeburn thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t part of that. Cruising the surface all day long was bad enough, but plummeting into the depths after the sun went down was something else entirely.
And then there was the dead man. No problem, if the powers that be decided it was death by misadventure. Raeburn wasn’t sure exactly what a misadventure was, but lately he’d suspected that he might be having one. It sure as hell wasn’t the adventure he’d expected when he’d joined the Tartan Independence Front.
They talked a good game, Gibson and his buddy Wallace. And they had delivered, to a point. Raeburn had helped to build some bombs that made a bit of noise on the telly, and the Yank they’d snuffed in Glasgow definitely caused a stir. They had a long way yet to go before they claimed a victory, but getting there was more than half the fun.
When he’d signed on, Raeburn was thinking of the IRA in Belfast, all the action they had seen and the respect that they’d commanded. Fighting on for years and years before Raeburn was born, whole generations of combatants raised to flout the English law and wade in blood to reach their goal.
But riding up and down a lake to look at fish?
Not bloody likely.
He wasn’t giving up, mind you. The TIF was still the closest thing to family that Raeburn had discovered since he was expelled from school and his old man had thrown him out for tarnishing the Raeburn name. His kinfolk had been dead to Raeburn since that day, but not forgotten, and whenever he was lifted by the coppers, Raeburn hoped they were embarrassed yet again.
Petty? Hell, yes, he realized. Satisfying, too, at the same time.
Beneath his feet, the rumble of the DeepScan’s engine changed. Raeburn could feel the boat begin a wide, slow turn. He wondered if they were about to start another pass along the loch, as if twelve hours was enough to satisfy the bloody laird this day.
His stomach growled, whether from hunger or his last beer he couldn’t say. They ate well at Macauley’s place, no denying it, but steak and tatties only went so far toward satisfying any warrior dedicated to a holy cause.
Some action would be nice, and Raeburn hoped that he would see some soon. If nothing else, maybe he could sneak off to Inverness over the coming weekend, find himself a stunner who would take his mind off fishy business at the loch.
“We’re headin’ back,” Wallace called from the companionway. “Keep a sharp lookout on those screens until we’re at the dock.”
“Aye-aye,” Raeburn replied, watching the sonar pick out salmon, trout and char by size, in different colors. All so bloody fascinating, he could barely stay awake.
Fort Augustus: 4:50 p.m.
BOLAN RENTED the boat from the old codger who had three on hand for fishermen. It measured fifteen feet and had a vintage British Seagull outboard motor bolted to its stern. The old man raised an eyebrow when he noted Bolan’s lack of any fishing gear, but still took cash enough up front to replace the boat twice over, in case Bolan sent it to the bottom of the loch.
The soldier puttered out from dockside, following the same channel he’d traveled on the Royal Scot, earlier. The small boat handled well enough, the motor running loud but smoothly. On his right, the former monastery had a nice medieval look about it from a distance, hard to visualize the modern luxury inside. Its spacious immaculate grounds, looked like a perfect spot for golf and horseback riding, although neither sport was physically in evidence.
Beyond the channel, Bolan held a steady course northward, staying two hundred yards or so out from the eastern shoreline on his right. He’d brought his map, to help with landmarks, such as the stone pyramid commemorating the death of Winifred Hambro, a banker’s wife who vanished into Loch Ness when her family’s boat capsized in 1932. Beneath that monument lay Corrie’s cave, the reputed hideout of an eighteenth-century rebel who tried to assassinate Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, during the Jacobite rebellion.
Blood and history, wherever Bolan turned.
The loch was relatively calm as he motored northward. Only a mile and a half across at its widest point, but at twenty-five miles in length, the loch seemed vast from his seat in the small rented boat. Away to his left, the Inchnacardoch Lodge looked like a hotel from a child’s Monopoly game, small enough to cover with the tip of Bolan’s thumb.
And what if he should meet a real-life monster on the loch? He wore the big Beretta 93-R in its shoulder rig, but would a handgun help at all, against a prehistoric dragon? Bolan doubted it would, and while he put no stock in legends, cruising on the loch alone, mere inches from the water’s surface, left him with a brooding sense that anything could happen.
Soon enough, he reached the point where Alastair Macauley’s mansion loomed above the loch, its narrow staircase and electric lift descending steeply to a pontoon dock below. Bolan supposed the lift was used for hoisting cargo brought from Inverness or Drumnadrochit, even up from Fort Augustus if Macauley’s people didn’t feel like driving two or three miles overland to shop.
As Bolan passed, the lift was running, easing down the hillside with two passengers aboard. He couldn’t stop and stare, but Bolan registered that both were men, one standing, while the other sat. A wheelchair, possibly? But why were they descending, with no boat on hand to carry them away?
He got his answer moments later, when he met the DeepScan coming home. One of its crewmen was on deck, smoking a cigarette, the others merely shadows in the wheelhouse and belowdecks, through the bank of tinted windows. Searching—but for what?
He didn’t buy the image of Macauley as an aging cryptozoologist, trying to prove that Nessie existed. But if the cover story was false, why waste time and bucketsful of cash scanning the loch’s abyssal depths? How did it serve the Scottish revolution bankrolled by Macauley—if, in fact, Beacher was right about the laird’s involvement with the Tartan Independence Front?
Bolan nodded at the DeepScan as he passed, observing standard boater’s etiquette, and didn’t start his southward turn until he’d traveled for another quarter mile or so along his present course. It wouldn’t do to tip the vessel’s captain to the fact that he was being tailed, so Bolan swung out fart
her toward the middle of the loch for his return to Fort Augustus.
The DeepScan was already nosing in to dock as Bolan overtook it, churning southward. Casually, he palmed his cell phone, raised it as if checking for a signal—there was none—and peered at the sky as if the answer to his problem hovered there. From that pose, Bolan keyed the video recording function, zoomed it to the max and held the phone as steady as his small craft would allow until he’d passed Macauley’s wharf.
Next it was back to Fort Augustus and Beacher, to see what she had learned from the police and try to match the faces he had captured, if they were in focus, to the TIF or any known associates.
BEACHER FOUND Liam Abercrombie in his tiny office at Memorial Hall, filling out what she supposed had to be an accident report. He was a slender man with hair nearly the color of his deeply tanned and weathered face. If Beacher hadn’t known he was the water bailiff, she’d have pegged him as a fisherman, perhaps a hunter’s guide.
She badged him, introduced herself and shook his callused hand. With evident reluctance, Abercrombie nodded toward the small room’s only vacant chair and waited while she sat.
“Before we start,” she said, “I need to ask that you hold anything I say in strictest confidence.”
“Oh, aye? And why is that?” he asked.
“I’m in the midst of an investigation, and it’s classified,” Beacher replied.
“Like national security, you mean?”
“Like that, exactly.”
“Och,” he said, rising a little taller in his swivel chair. “I’d best pay close attention, then. Some kind of Russian spy ship sneaking down through the canal, is it? A plot to make our sheep go bald, and all?”
Frowning, she said, “I’m not James Bond.”
“No, ma’am. You surely aren’t—although you may know, he was Scottish on his dad’s side.”
“What I’ve come to ask about is the MacTaggart drowning,” Beacher said.
The water bailiff sighed and shook his head. “Old Ronnie, eh? It figured that the loch would claim him someday, I suppose.”
“And why is that?”
“His poaching. Kept himself in drink with that.”
She raised an eyebrow and asked, “You were aware of his activities?”
“Of course,” Abercrombie said. “I’m the one who lifted him and fined him half a dozen times over the past six, seven years. Reckon I caught him once for every twenty-five or thirty trips he made.”
“So, a persistent violator, then.”
“Persistent and consistent,” Abercrombie said. “Old Ronnie had his steady list of customers, you know. In Foyers, Fort Augustus, up as far as Portclair on occasion. Restaurants and shops could always count on Ronnie for a decent shake.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“Aye, so he is. It happens, eh?”
“How often, would you say?” Beacher inquired.
“To Robbie? Just the once.”
Resisting the impulse to snap at him, she said, “Drownings, I mean. Within your bailiwick.”
“Not often, hereabouts,” he answered. “Ronnie is our first this year, in fact. Had two last year, but both of them fell out of the same boat. I ask you, ma’am, who takes a boat out, if they’s never learned to swim?”
“Could Ronnie swim?” she asked.
“Oh, aye. Part eel, I’d guess he was. Swum with the best of them.”
“So, then…what happened, do you think?”
“From what I saw, fishin’ him out, he’d banged his head,” Abercrombie said.
“How would that go?” she inquired.
“The loch can be a right bitch, if you’ll pardon me. Look smooth as glass one minute, then a wave comes up from nowhere and you’re rockin’ fit to topple. Some’ll tell you it’s the beastie. Ronnie could’ve lurched and hit his head, then fallen overboard. Tried comin’ up and beaned himself against the hull.”
“You saw head injuries?” she asked.
“I did, ma’am,” Abercrombie answered. “Here…and here.” He aimed an index finger to his temple first, then drew it around behind his ear.
“Two impacts.”
“Could’ve happened like I said.”
Or someone could have bludgeoned him, she thought. But why?
“You said he poached for local restaurants and shops?”
A silent nod across the desk.
“No individuals who dealt with him, at all?” Beacher inquired.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to hear his neighbors got a trout from time to time, an’ all. That Ronnie was generous to his friends.”
“But would he sell to private individuals?” she pressed.
The water bailiff countered with a question of his own. “Like who?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know any locals. You tell me.”
He thought about it for a moment, or pretended to, then said, “Can’t think of anyone, offhand. Which is to say, I never caught him sellin’ private, like. I couldn’t rule it out, but I see nothing to do with national security and all in poaching fish.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “What are your thoughts about the latest monster hunt?”
“Well, now…I won’t say nothin’s out there, will I? Even though I’ve never seen the kelpie for myself, there’s many I respect and trust who have. Some tourists, too,” he added with a half smile.
“Does it strike you odd that Alastair Macauley would invest so much in searching for the creature after all this time?”
“Who knows? The wealthy aren’t like you or me,” Abercrombie said. “One of them gets a notion in his head, he’s got the time and money to indulge it. For all I know, the laird’s been interested in the beastie all his life, but just now took a notion to investigate. Nobody faults him spendin’ money where it does some good.”
“Have you met any of the people he’s got working for him?” Beacher asked.
“Aboard the boat, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“I introduced myself, when they first got here,” Abercrombie said. “Not locals, but they seem all right. Respectful, like.”
Beacher sensed his reserve and didn’t push it. She thanked the water bailiff for his time and left, without reminding him to keep his mouth shut. If he planned to betray her out, a second warning wouldn’t matter.
And it might identify another enemy.
Chapter 9
The chairlift was a slow, noisy contraption, gumbling and groaning as it carried Jurgen Dengler in his wheelchair up the steep hillside from Loch Ness to the house above. A breeze rippled his thinning, snow-white hair and made him shiver slightly, even underneath his heavy overcoat.
Dengler rode the lift alone on his return trip to the mansion on the bluff. Gibson had ridden down with him, a point of courtesy, but had chosen to climb the staircase with his crewmen from the DeepScan, going back. Two of the small-fry hurried on ahead, likely to slake their thirst for alcohol, while Wallace stayed with Gibson, keeping pace with Dengler’s lift. They chattered aimlessly along the way, discussing nothing in particular, while Dengler scanned the loch with cold gray eyes.
Watching a motorboat that passed the doch below, southbound to Fort Augustus, Dengler frowned and said, “I’ve seen that one before.”
Gibson and Wallace turned to see what he was looking at, tracking the small boat on its way. The lone man at the tiller held something before his face, examining it.
“Just a fisherman,” Wallace said.
“Nobody,” Gibson agreed.
To Gibson, Dengler said, “You didn’t notice him, as we were coming down? He passed the other way, northbound.”
“I musta missed it,” Gibson said, entirely u
nconcerned.
“Those little boats all look alike,” Wallace said.
“One man, with no fishing gear,” Dengler observed. “Making a round-trip in such a short time? Where, we may ask, was he going?”
“Now you mention it,” Wallace said, “he could be the same fella who passed us on the loch afore.”
“Could be? You are not certain?” Dengler challenged.
“No,” Wallace replied. “I didn’t pay attention to ‘im, special. Folk go boatin’ on the loch, ya know.”
“Certainly,” Dengler said. “But do you notice if they follow you, perhaps?”
“Ya think he…? No, he never,” Wallace said.
“I would prefer to know, instead of guessing,” Dengler said, this time addressing Gibson.
“Aye,” Gibson replied. “And me, as well.”
Wallace could not conceal the angry flush that tinged his cheeks at that. “Fergus,” he said, “you think I’d miss somethin’ like that?”
“There’s no harm making sure,” Gibson replied. “It costs nothing if we send a couple of the boys to ask around in town. Check out the boat-hire spots and all.”
Dengler felt Wallace glaring at him and was unconcerned. The Scotsman could not touch him—or would rue it to his dying moment, if he did. Dengler might be old and crippled, but he was not without influence. Unless he’d lost his mind, Wallace would not risk Alastair Macauley’s wrath to harm him.
The motorboat had vanished by the time they reached the halfway point between Macauley’s private dock and his stone mansion on the summit. Dengler chafed to hear what Wallace and his crew had found today, if anything, but instinct told him to be ready for another disappointment. If they had discovered what they sought, he would have already known. Wallace would certainly have spilled the news to Gibson, or at least hinted around it, in defiance of Macauley’s order that he be the first to know.
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